Five and the Mystery of the Declining Fertility - the BESH engage the services of the Famous Five to track down their baybees and finish with lashings of ginger beer. Topping!

Morning everyone, just let me wolf down this amazing meal of tinned tongue, hardboiled eggs and ginger beer (don't you find food always tastes so much better outside?) and we'll toddle off on our latest adventure. We'll make sure Anne does the washing up (you'll make a proper little housewife and no doubt the fecund mother of four fine sons one day Anne <approving>) and us boys can have the proper adventures! No, not you George - you're nearly as good as a boy but not quite. Leave the actual procreating to me and Dick. Woof woof! Shut up Timmy!

PS any newbies welcome. Just as long as you are in your thirties, slightly bitter and twisted about, have been TTC since Enid Blyton was writing, are allergic to babydust and use of the terms hun, hubby, BD and bubs Find the questionnaire which is lurking in the annals somewhere and fill it in. We will be ready to peruse accordingly (bugger it, who am I kidding, no one has ever failed apart from one person )

Jolly good! Sit by Timmy there would you. No Timmy, she's not a stranger. TIMMY - STOP BITING.

Well someone crashed the Palais who had 2 children already and was 27 and asked to join. You know the BESH criteria <dark>. Trouble is, we were going through some anguished soul searching at the time, because a lot of us had secondary fertility and people were saying they didn't feel welcome because they had one child already. Caused no end of hoo har. We soon sorted it out though with some hard boiled eggs and pork pie.

SpiffingSinky (can I call you that?), I think that Swallows and Amazons and Famous Five sentiments are much of a muchness, even if S and A pre-dated FF a bit. Anyway, there is the same obsession with focus on Adventure, Independence, Picnics and Lashings of Gin lemonade and tinned tongue.

Timmy, leave the nice postman alone.

<gobbles ice> Gosh, thanks Uncle Quentin. Fancy taking out time from all the Important Science to give us a half crown. Do we think Uncle Quentin could be persuaded to devote his super mind on fertility research?

Golly rie you mustn't disturb Uncle Quentin, he's jolly clever but can't stand the noise we children make. Let's go shrimping in the rock pools around Kirrin Bay. Silly little Anne can't come though, she fell in last year and made every such a fuss.

I must say, in my younger days I thought it would be rather grand to attend an Enid Blyton style boarding school. But then I remembered that school was ghastly and living there would be just beastly.

In between adventures and cream teas today, I checked with another ov stick; I have definitely missed my chance this month

No no no, you're all wrong. Kathleen with the horrid greasy hair and spots was at Whyteleafe with the Naughtiest Girl In The School, Elizabeth Allen. She was miraculously cured of her spots when she took up horse riding and gardening. Malory Towers did have the lido though.